TheCable

The federal government says it does not have the statistics of unemployed youths in the country.

James Ocholi, minister of state for labour and employment, said this in Abuja on Wednesday, while responding to a question on one of the campaign promises of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

Ocholi said there were efforts in place to capture not just the data of the unemployed but also employed, in order to implement the plan of assisting vulnerable youths.

“There is no data anywhere. There is no data of the unemployed or employed. It is a bad situation but as we speak, experts are working to capture the data of the employed and the unemployed.

“There is a firm that is working with the National Directorate of Employment; they are preparing for a mega scale on job profiling.”

Ocholi’s comment is coming exactly a week after Chris Ngige, minister of labour and employment, said indolent youths would not partake in the programme when it kicks off.

The controversial promise has generated interest among Nigerians.

In November, lawmakers of the upper chamber of the national assembly were divided along party lines after Philip Aduda, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) senator, moved a motion for President Muhammadu Buhari to fulfill the promise.

Subsequently, Lai Mohammed, minister of information and culture, who was then the spokesman of APC, blamed the inability to meet the expectation of Nigerians in that regard on the non-inclusion of the programme in the 2015 budget prepared by the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan.

Mohammed, who estimated the number of prospective beneficiaries at N25 million, had said: “APC never at any time indicated it has reneged on its promise to pay 5,000 naira monthly to 25 million most vulnerable Nigerians. The non-implementation of the payment policy so far is due to the fact that it was not included in the 2015 budget, which was prepared by the PDP-led Jonathan administration. Now, the Buhari administration has been busy putting into place measures that will make it possible to start the implementation of this project.”